We're hours away from the moment when our Kansas City Royals take the field at Kauffman Stadium and begin a new season. Baseball analysts that predict success for KC this year are tough to find, but that has nothing to do with the simple joy that all baseball fans feel swelling up in them on Opening Day. Do not forget how beautiful the crack of the bat sounds, and how it magically sounds just a little more special when it really matters. Do not let anything negative about this season take that unique pleasure away from you today.
Sorry. I just wanted to get sentimental before we talk about stuff like stats and numbers, especially since most of the stats and numbers are not uplifting this time around. Here is the most important and frightening one to remember right now: 142,000,000. That is the total amount of American dollars on contracts belonging to Alex Gordon and Ian Kennedy. Both now return from extremely disappointing seasons. Both of them are at least 33. If the young pieces come together to form something resembling a winning baseball team, all the pressure falls on Gordo and Kennedy. If both continue to underperform, they will ensure that this will be a losing season for the Royals.
If anyone can have a noteworthy spring, it's Ian Kennedy. I guess Gordon's abysmal spring is noteworthy in the same way a young child dropping an ice cream cone is noteworthy, in that it makes me and everyone who witnessed it very sad, but I mean noteworthy in a postiive way. After Kennedy posted the highest ERA of any full season in his career, he looked way more solid in the Cactus League than I would've imagined. His 18 innings pitched was a team high, as were his 23 strikeouts, and his seven walks allowed would suggest that his command is back for now. If he can bounce back, it means the Royals' starting rotation suddenly looks pretty okay instead of awful. "Pretty okay" isn't a compliment many people want to receive, but it's a significant improvement from "awful", right?
There is reason to believe the 33 year-old right-hander can be better than last year's 5.38 ERA. As I said, that was easily his worst year of full-time pitching. He pitched more innings and recorded an ERA below 4.3 in each of the three seasons prior to 2017. Let's not forget about the guy who recorded a 3.68 ERA while striking out 184 batters and eating up 195 and 2/3rds innings in 2016. There is nothing to make us assume Kennedy cannot be more like that guy and less like the guy we saw last year. Perhaps it really was his inability to recover from some nagging injuries that made last season such a struggle.
Kennedy's health is clearly worth taking note of, but he likely won't be with the team when KC reaches its next wave of perennial playoff contention. For that reason, the health of today's starter is even more of a factor. We need to see Danny Duffy looking sharp and preferably pitching comfortably into the later innings against the Chicago White Sox today. I'd rather see us blow a late lead after Duffy pitches well than win a thrilling extra-innings game in which he has a short outing and looks tight. If he reaches for that throwing shoulder for even a half-second, my heart's gonna jump a little. His healthy progression means more than anything in today's game, except for, of course, the sights and sounds of meaningful baseball returning in earnest to all our lives. Enjoy yourself today, and thanks for reading.
Doug LaCerte writes about different stuff, owns an often-neglected Facebook and occasionally tweets tweets @DLaC67.
No comments:
Post a Comment